Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times has a piece on Portland Trail Blazers GM Neil Olshey making the transition to a new team after nearly a decade with the Los Angeles Clippers.

"After nine years, I had done everything I felt like I could do there," Olshey said Wednesday before the Trail Blazers defeated the Lakers at the Rose Garden. "It would have been nice to enjoy the ride for the next period of time with the guys that we had acquired, but it was time for kind of a new challenge."

...

"I don't know if we'll be that lucky here," Olshey said, referring to the [Chris] Paul trade, "but we have the same flexibility. And that's all we're trying to create, is have a core group of players we're going to go forward with and then have the [salary] cap flexibility to involve ourselves in player acquisition deals."

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"He did a tremendous job changing the perception of the organization and changing the culture," one NBA executive said of Olshey's work with the Clippers, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss a competitor. "He made the L.A. Clippers an organization that guys want to play for and that's no small task considering their history."

Olshey also said that he still watches Clippers games religiously and that acquiring Eric Bledsoe is his "proudest moment" in the Draft as a GM.

-- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter